Edited by Jennifer Sills
Science diplomacy and beyond I READ WITH interest and sympathy the
PHOTOS (LEFT TO RIGHT): TONG RO/THINKSTOCK; ALBANE46/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Editorial “Warming U.S.-Russia relations” (C. A. Campbell, 20 June, p. 1323). I agree about the importance of science diplomacy, an endeavor to which I devoted over 40 years of my career in both the public and nonprofit sectors, specifically in the Soviet and post-Soviet space. However, I cannot agree that science diplomacy is on the level of a categorical imperative, trumping and contradicting critical U.S. foreign policy goals.
We folks who love to talk about “science diplomacy” sometimes forget that “science” is an adjective qualifying the subject, which is “diplomacy.” Diplomacy, when funded as such by the U.S. government, is an expression of U.S. foreign policy. When policy-makers decide that our foreign policy must reflect our displeasure through serious sanctions against a country for clear violations of international norms and even outright aggression, then it is appropriate and reasonable for a broad range of government-funded programs under the diplomacy rubric to be affected. This can be very hard on the participants, both personally and professionally, especially those in the offending country, who often put themselves at considerable risk just by taking part in them. We all suffer when these or any other serious sanctions are imposed. That is the world in which we live, the world in which science lives, too. In terms of international science cooperation, we sometimes need to distinguish among public funds appropriated primarily to improve political relations with other
countries (“science diplomacy”); public funds appropriated to support science itself (e.g., through the appropriations of the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and other agencies); and the broad range of science cooperation that takes place without any public funds at all. Campbell notes that in the 1980s, the U.S. government terminated some cooperative programs in light of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Sakharov affair. In this case, publicly funded “science diplomacy” was a casualty—a regrettable one—of larger circumstances. But in those same years, cooperation between scientists of the United States and the Soviet Union continued, in some cases vigorously, through competitive federally funded research grants as well as private resources. It is very important that scientists do what they can on their own—and they often do—to ensure that their foreign colleagues remain an integral part of the world scientific community. Such voluntary initiatives by U.S. scientists in the early 1990s were the spark of the unprecedented explosion of support for science in the countries of the former Soviet Union over the next decade, fueled by enormous resources from both the public and nonprofit sectors. Campbell is right that we ought not to forget Ukraine. Here, the foreign policy goals of the United States are aligned with scientific goals. Indeed, the United States should now include vigorous science diplomacy as an integral part of our effort to help Ukraine be a viable country. Science and technology—with which Ukraine, as well as Russia, is well endowed as part of its post-Soviet legacy (perhaps even more so, on a per capita basis)—will be vital to Ukraine’s economic health in today’s global knowledge economy. The new Ukrainian government seems to recognize this: From its very first day, politicians and scientists started serious work on long-delayed reform of the Ukrainian science system. Competitive, investigator-initiated, meritreviewed research funding is to grow from 20% of the publicly funded total to an ambitious goal of 80%, far surpassing the grandest of Russian ambitions in this arena. The United States should now reprogram its assistance funds, which support many of the science diplomacy programs through public and nonprofit performers, to give this effort and other Ukrainian science reforms a major boost. Especially in such a moment of crisis, science diplomacy can be, and has been, a force for positive change and even for the emergence of civil society.
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
If we adopt a nuanced, and, as appropriate, selective approach to furthering international science cooperation, which is so vital to science and often so effective as a tool of foreign policy, we will both be more effective and supportive of our nation’s interests in serious crises such as those we face today. Gerson S. Sher Washington, DC 20037, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Electric organs: History and potential THE REPORT “GENOMIC basis for the
convergent evolution of electric organs” (J. R. Gallant et al., 27 June, p. 1522) is even more interesting when considered in light of the field’s historical context. Attempts to explain electric organ function led to the invention of batteries and thus to bioelectric batteries, which may soon drive the electric devices designed to replace dysfunctional organs.
Volta battery.
The battery built by Volta in 1800 provided the first source of continuously available electricity (1). This provided sources for electricity used by engineers such as Faraday, Edison, and Tesla, who started the technical revolution we are still enjoying today. The template for Volta’s battery was based on the electric stingray organ as described by Lorenzini (2). The battery was meant to prove that 8 AUGUST 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6197
Published by AAAS
631
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on July 24, 2015
LET TERS
INSIGHTS
Breeding for speed ONLINE BUZZ: CAREERS I READ WITH interest the In Depth story
Overcoming insecurity
I
N HIS WORKING LIFE COLUMN “Tell the negative committee to shut up” (18 July, p. 350), F. Muindi discussed the insecurity he faced as he pursued each step of his academic career, and how he overcame it and built self-confidence through positive thinking and support from mentors, friends, and family. The “impostor syndrome” that Muindi experienced struck a chord with readers. Excerpts from their comments are below. To read all comments, go to http:// comments.sciencemag.org/content/10.1126/science.345.6194.350. A selection of your thoughts: We all live with one negative committee or another. Who we are or want to be determines how we are and how we handle negativity. Seek what we can do and have fun doing it. Never give up! I didn’t even when I was two and three times as old as my student cohort and my instructors….
“Racing for disaster?” (A. Gibbons, 13 June, p. 1213) on breeding thoroughbreds for speed, and the concerns about inbreeding and the resulting shrinkage of the gene pool. As Gibbons points out, such selection for speed generally involves putting 3-yearold stallions out to stud after winning one or more high-profile races when they are little more than adolescents. However, the inference that today’s select thoroughbreds (despite having “larger muscles balanced on slimmer legs and smaller
Ralph Miller Welcome to the world of self-doubt. That trait exists to some degree or another in
each of us. Don’t fear it. It is an old behavioral trait in most animals, stemming from our evolutionary past. It is related to fear. What science gives us is a methodology to overcome the ignorance and fear. Evolution also gave humans (and some raccoons, as I am finding out!) the ability to also use our reason and logic and the scientific method. These are the traits to use when this old animalistic beast tries to surface.… Jeff Owen
disposition, but remember that not everyone does. Perhaps not everyone can? John Clayton …My biggest TROUBLES have come from either me or someone else being too
confident in their abilities or their past work to check over something carefully. Overconfidence leads to cutting corners. Meanwhile, insecurity in how much you know leads to a real impetus to learn more so that you “don’t feel dumb next time.” Insecurity in your data leads you to repeat, repeat, and check the controls. The reason this guy succeeded was *because* of his insecurity.… Patricia LiWang
bioelectricity was the same as the electricity generated with Galvani’s metal plates (3, 4). After this discovery, many used batteries to elicit sensory stimulations and even make cadavers twitch, much like Galvani had done earlier with his frog leg experiment (5). By creating his battery, Volta demonstrated that electric fish contain a battery that can provide readily available electric energy. Now, more than 200 years later, we may witness a second revolution again driven by electric fish: We may soon use our genetic understanding of electrocytes to generate electric organs in humans. The artificial organs will function like organic batteries and drive implanted devices such as cochlear implants or pacemakers (6, 7). It might even be possible to turn nonfunctional muscles of 632
limb stumps into electric organs capable of generating enough bioelectric energies to drive small electric motors in already existing exoskeletons, thus giving back motility to the immobile by molecularly converting useless muscle mass into useful bioelectric batteries.
hooves”) run faster than their predecessors is simply wrong. A perusal of Kentucky Derby winning times between 1950 and 2012 (1) indicates no significant increase in speed over those 62 years. Some of the variability, especially the slower times, is undoubtedly related to the condition of the track, but even the record time, established by Secretariat in 1973, is within 3 seconds of the mean. Over a comparable period, milk production among U.S. dairy cows—also the targets of breeding—has increased more than threefold (2). I do not claim that thoroughbreds put in the hands of dairy farmers would be running sub–1-minute miles in 2014, but it is clear that breeding for speed under the present arcane strategies used by the thoroughbred industry is simply not working, even as the gene pool narrows.
Bernd Fritzsch
R. Michael Roberts
Department of Biology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Division of Animal Sciences and Bond Life Sciences Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
REFERENCES
1. A. Volta, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 90, 403 (1800). 2. S. Lorenzini, Osservazioni Intorno alle Torpedini (Florence, l’Onofri, 1678). 3. P. Moller, B. Fritzsch, J. Comp. Physiol. A 173, 734 (1993). 4. P. Moller, Electric Fishes: History and Behavior (Chapman & Hall, London, 1995), vol. 17. 5. L. Galvani, De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari (Universita di Bologna, Bologna, 1792). 6. M. A. Karami, D. J. Inman, Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 042901 (2012). 7. M. Hansen et al., Otol. Neuotol. 34, 1681 (2013).
REFERENCES
1. Horse Hats, Kentucky Derby Winners, Past Winners and Statistics (www.horsehats.com/KentuckyDerbyWinners. html). 2. D. Blayney, “The changing landscape of U.S. milk production, statistical bulletin SB-978, Appendix Table 1–U.S. milk production, 1950-2000” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2002); www.ers.usda.gov/publications/sb-statistical-bulletin/ sb978.aspx.
sciencemag.org SCIENCE
8 AUGUST 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6197
Published by AAAS
PHOTO: JEFF KUBINA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
…I hope you continue to rise in your career because of your self-awareness and
Science diplomacy and beyond I READ WITH interest and sympathy the
PHOTOS (LEFT TO RIGHT): TONG RO/THINKSTOCK; ALBANE46/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Editorial “Warming U.S.-Russia relations” (C. A. Campbell, 20 June, p. 1323). I agree about the importance of science diplomacy, an endeavor to which I devoted over 40 years of my career in both the public and nonprofit sectors, specifically in the Soviet and post-Soviet space. However, I cannot agree that science diplomacy is on the level of a categorical imperative, trumping and contradicting critical U.S. foreign policy goals.
We folks who love to talk about “science diplomacy” sometimes forget that “science” is an adjective qualifying the subject, which is “diplomacy.” Diplomacy, when funded as such by the U.S. government, is an expression of U.S. foreign policy. When policy-makers decide that our foreign policy must reflect our displeasure through serious sanctions against a country for clear violations of international norms and even outright aggression, then it is appropriate and reasonable for a broad range of government-funded programs under the diplomacy rubric to be affected. This can be very hard on the participants, both personally and professionally, especially those in the offending country, who often put themselves at considerable risk just by taking part in them. We all suffer when these or any other serious sanctions are imposed. That is the world in which we live, the world in which science lives, too. In terms of international science cooperation, we sometimes need to distinguish among public funds appropriated primarily to improve political relations with other
countries (“science diplomacy”); public funds appropriated to support science itself (e.g., through the appropriations of the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and other agencies); and the broad range of science cooperation that takes place without any public funds at all. Campbell notes that in the 1980s, the U.S. government terminated some cooperative programs in light of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Sakharov affair. In this case, publicly funded “science diplomacy” was a casualty—a regrettable one—of larger circumstances. But in those same years, cooperation between scientists of the United States and the Soviet Union continued, in some cases vigorously, through competitive federally funded research grants as well as private resources. It is very important that scientists do what they can on their own—and they often do—to ensure that their foreign colleagues remain an integral part of the world scientific community. Such voluntary initiatives by U.S. scientists in the early 1990s were the spark of the unprecedented explosion of support for science in the countries of the former Soviet Union over the next decade, fueled by enormous resources from both the public and nonprofit sectors. Campbell is right that we ought not to forget Ukraine. Here, the foreign policy goals of the United States are aligned with scientific goals. Indeed, the United States should now include vigorous science diplomacy as an integral part of our effort to help Ukraine be a viable country. Science and technology—with which Ukraine, as well as Russia, is well endowed as part of its post-Soviet legacy (perhaps even more so, on a per capita basis)—will be vital to Ukraine’s economic health in today’s global knowledge economy. The new Ukrainian government seems to recognize this: From its very first day, politicians and scientists started serious work on long-delayed reform of the Ukrainian science system. Competitive, investigator-initiated, meritreviewed research funding is to grow from 20% of the publicly funded total to an ambitious goal of 80%, far surpassing the grandest of Russian ambitions in this arena. The United States should now reprogram its assistance funds, which support many of the science diplomacy programs through public and nonprofit performers, to give this effort and other Ukrainian science reforms a major boost. Especially in such a moment of crisis, science diplomacy can be, and has been, a force for positive change and even for the emergence of civil society.
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
If we adopt a nuanced, and, as appropriate, selective approach to furthering international science cooperation, which is so vital to science and often so effective as a tool of foreign policy, we will both be more effective and supportive of our nation’s interests in serious crises such as those we face today. Gerson S. Sher Washington, DC 20037, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Electric organs: History and potential THE REPORT “GENOMIC basis for the
convergent evolution of electric organs” (J. R. Gallant et al., 27 June, p. 1522) is even more interesting when considered in light of the field’s historical context. Attempts to explain electric organ function led to the invention of batteries and thus to bioelectric batteries, which may soon drive the electric devices designed to replace dysfunctional organs.
Volta battery.
The battery built by Volta in 1800 provided the first source of continuously available electricity (1). This provided sources for electricity used by engineers such as Faraday, Edison, and Tesla, who started the technical revolution we are still enjoying today. The template for Volta’s battery was based on the electric stingray organ as described by Lorenzini (2). The battery was meant to prove that 8 AUGUST 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6197
Published by AAAS
631
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on July 24, 2015
LET TERS
INSIGHTS
Breeding for speed ONLINE BUZZ: CAREERS I READ WITH interest the In Depth story
Overcoming insecurity
I
N HIS WORKING LIFE COLUMN “Tell the negative committee to shut up” (18 July, p. 350), F. Muindi discussed the insecurity he faced as he pursued each step of his academic career, and how he overcame it and built self-confidence through positive thinking and support from mentors, friends, and family. The “impostor syndrome” that Muindi experienced struck a chord with readers. Excerpts from their comments are below. To read all comments, go to http:// comments.sciencemag.org/content/10.1126/science.345.6194.350. A selection of your thoughts: We all live with one negative committee or another. Who we are or want to be determines how we are and how we handle negativity. Seek what we can do and have fun doing it. Never give up! I didn’t even when I was two and three times as old as my student cohort and my instructors….
“Racing for disaster?” (A. Gibbons, 13 June, p. 1213) on breeding thoroughbreds for speed, and the concerns about inbreeding and the resulting shrinkage of the gene pool. As Gibbons points out, such selection for speed generally involves putting 3-yearold stallions out to stud after winning one or more high-profile races when they are little more than adolescents. However, the inference that today’s select thoroughbreds (despite having “larger muscles balanced on slimmer legs and smaller
Ralph Miller Welcome to the world of self-doubt. That trait exists to some degree or another in
each of us. Don’t fear it. It is an old behavioral trait in most animals, stemming from our evolutionary past. It is related to fear. What science gives us is a methodology to overcome the ignorance and fear. Evolution also gave humans (and some raccoons, as I am finding out!) the ability to also use our reason and logic and the scientific method. These are the traits to use when this old animalistic beast tries to surface.… Jeff Owen
disposition, but remember that not everyone does. Perhaps not everyone can? John Clayton …My biggest TROUBLES have come from either me or someone else being too
confident in their abilities or their past work to check over something carefully. Overconfidence leads to cutting corners. Meanwhile, insecurity in how much you know leads to a real impetus to learn more so that you “don’t feel dumb next time.” Insecurity in your data leads you to repeat, repeat, and check the controls. The reason this guy succeeded was *because* of his insecurity.… Patricia LiWang
bioelectricity was the same as the electricity generated with Galvani’s metal plates (3, 4). After this discovery, many used batteries to elicit sensory stimulations and even make cadavers twitch, much like Galvani had done earlier with his frog leg experiment (5). By creating his battery, Volta demonstrated that electric fish contain a battery that can provide readily available electric energy. Now, more than 200 years later, we may witness a second revolution again driven by electric fish: We may soon use our genetic understanding of electrocytes to generate electric organs in humans. The artificial organs will function like organic batteries and drive implanted devices such as cochlear implants or pacemakers (6, 7). It might even be possible to turn nonfunctional muscles of 632
limb stumps into electric organs capable of generating enough bioelectric energies to drive small electric motors in already existing exoskeletons, thus giving back motility to the immobile by molecularly converting useless muscle mass into useful bioelectric batteries.
hooves”) run faster than their predecessors is simply wrong. A perusal of Kentucky Derby winning times between 1950 and 2012 (1) indicates no significant increase in speed over those 62 years. Some of the variability, especially the slower times, is undoubtedly related to the condition of the track, but even the record time, established by Secretariat in 1973, is within 3 seconds of the mean. Over a comparable period, milk production among U.S. dairy cows—also the targets of breeding—has increased more than threefold (2). I do not claim that thoroughbreds put in the hands of dairy farmers would be running sub–1-minute miles in 2014, but it is clear that breeding for speed under the present arcane strategies used by the thoroughbred industry is simply not working, even as the gene pool narrows.
Bernd Fritzsch
R. Michael Roberts
Department of Biology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Division of Animal Sciences and Bond Life Sciences Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
REFERENCES
1. A. Volta, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 90, 403 (1800). 2. S. Lorenzini, Osservazioni Intorno alle Torpedini (Florence, l’Onofri, 1678). 3. P. Moller, B. Fritzsch, J. Comp. Physiol. A 173, 734 (1993). 4. P. Moller, Electric Fishes: History and Behavior (Chapman & Hall, London, 1995), vol. 17. 5. L. Galvani, De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari (Universita di Bologna, Bologna, 1792). 6. M. A. Karami, D. J. Inman, Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 042901 (2012). 7. M. Hansen et al., Otol. Neuotol. 34, 1681 (2013).
REFERENCES
1. Horse Hats, Kentucky Derby Winners, Past Winners and Statistics (www.horsehats.com/KentuckyDerbyWinners. html). 2. D. Blayney, “The changing landscape of U.S. milk production, statistical bulletin SB-978, Appendix Table 1–U.S. milk production, 1950-2000” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2002); www.ers.usda.gov/publications/sb-statistical-bulletin/ sb978.aspx.
sciencemag.org SCIENCE
8 AUGUST 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6197
Published by AAAS
PHOTO: JEFF KUBINA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
…I hope you continue to rise in your career because of your self-awareness and
